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British-Albanian Network Uses Luxury Superyachts to Smuggle Deported Convicts
GB News reported a criminal operation ferrying expelled Albanian prisoners from the Netherlands to ports near Dover on high-end vessels. The service charges £15,500 per passenger and advertises on TikTok. Official data shows 4,614 deported individuals have re-entered Britain in five years.
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A British-Albanian criminal network is operating a people-smuggling service that uses luxury superyachts to ferry deported convicts from the Netherlands to ports near Dover, GB News reported. The gang advertises the route on TikTok and charges £15,500 per passenger. The operation targets Albanian nationals who served prison sentences in Britain before expulsion.
An undercover reporter posing as a deported Albanian who had been held at Wandsworth Prison contacted the smugglers through a TikTok advertisement. Communications then moved to WhatsApp, where one member used a UK phone number. "I've got one seat on the boat today.
A big yacht, a luxury one. We only take cash," one smuggler stated. Payment must be delivered in cash by a family member at a coffee shop in Albania. A second gang member, who said he had served nearly two years in Doncaster Prison for cocaine dealing, described a vessel with three luxury cabins that carries no more than ten passengers and is crewed by Albanian skippers.
The gang invested €50,000 to hire the yacht and said it had recently transported 11 people to Britain. Official data show 4,614 deported individuals re-entered the UK in the past five years. At least 723 of them were removed on two or more occasions.
The Home Office stated actual figures may be higher because of difficulties matching individuals to prior identity records. The TikTok account was removed within an hour of being reported for breaching human trafficking guidelines. In May, five men were detained after a vessel carrying seven people was intercepted off southern England.
Two Ukrainians received prison sentences of five and six years in March for running a separate premium smuggling service that charged £13,000 per passenger.
